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shanviolinlove's review
5.0
Medbh McGuckian's work was on a syllabus for a post-colonial seminar. Prior to this class, I had not encountered her work, and after reading her poems such as "The Sitting" or "Venus and the Rain," I feel like I've been missing out. True, the most popular comment in class was how challenging McGuckian's poems are; even a scrupulous read will not elicit half the intended meaning. Her lines are awash in rich references, gorgeous imagery, evocative figurative language (her poems may have a comparison four similes deep), and subtle double meaning, whether writing about pregnancy or the political state of Northern Ireland.
One interesting fact we learned was that McGuckian won a prestigious award for her poem, "The Flitting" (the poem in question with the multi-layered similes), but upon discovering that she was a pregnant Irish woman (she had submitted under a gender-neutral pseudonym), the judges decided to split the award, since she didn't embody the "image" of the award they sought.
Though challenging, her poems are dense with creative beauty, musical tones, and imagistic language we just don't often encounter at that caliber. For example:
"Half-real, half-dreamed,
untouched, untouchable, the yet-to-be-born weather,
distempering me as lips disturb the vespered worlds
of grapes, this onset of a poetess and her
persuasive bones sending me and my life away." (From "Ode to a Poetess.")
One interesting fact we learned was that McGuckian won a prestigious award for her poem, "The Flitting" (the poem in question with the multi-layered similes), but upon discovering that she was a pregnant Irish woman (she had submitted under a gender-neutral pseudonym), the judges decided to split the award, since she didn't embody the "image" of the award they sought.
Though challenging, her poems are dense with creative beauty, musical tones, and imagistic language we just don't often encounter at that caliber. For example:
"Half-real, half-dreamed,
untouched, untouchable, the yet-to-be-born weather,
distempering me as lips disturb the vespered worlds
of grapes, this onset of a poetess and her
persuasive bones sending me and my life away." (From "Ode to a Poetess.")
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